


Karnival of Blight: The spectacular failure of Kylo Ren’s “luxury music festival”

by valda



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Festivals, Gen, Newspaper article format, Parody
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-26 00:17:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10775505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valda/pseuds/valda
Summary: Journalist Gwendoline Phasma reports on a music festival for Instagram elites that ended in disaster. Armitage B. Hux I, who documented the event on Twitter, is heavily cited.





	Karnival of Blight: The spectacular failure of Kylo Ren’s “luxury music festival”

Gwendoline Phasma, staff reporter

April 28, 2017

After months of speculation, Karnival of Knights has proven itself to be the disaster that many had warned it would be.

The high-end music festival, touted by organizer Kylo Ren as “Coachella for influencers and young elites,” was to have taken place this weekend and next on a private island in the Bahamas. My Chemical Romance was set to headline a roster of approximately 40 bands that fluctuated wildly as the event approached. A pass to the full festival was priced at $12,000, with VIP and other experiences available for additional fees. Organizers promised chartered jets from Miami to the Exumas for every guest, and a treasure hunt across the islands had been planned, the grand prize being a strip of beach on a private island.

Kylo Ren considered the event part of a branding strategy for his foundling tech company, Knights of Ren. In an interview with Vanity Fair, he expressed excitement at the prospect of finding potential investors among his guests. “It’s gonna be great,” he said. “The best way to get people interested is to throw them a party.”

But Karnival of Knights was plagued by logistics issues and controversy from the moment it was announced. Rey Ridley, an events coordinator hired in early March to wrangle talent, quit after just four days on the job.

“It was a disaster,” she said. “There was no money to pay the talent. There was no project coordinator. There was no plan to build the stages. No one was taking care of the details. They didn’t even have me sign an NDA.”

Thursday afternoon, just before the festival started, My Chemical Romance announced they would not play the event after all. “We’re not sure we would have what we need to put on a proper show,” the band said in a statement.

Upon arrival to the Exumas on Friday, festival-goers found only partially constructed stages. The luxurious glamping tents that had been promised as accommodation were in fact disaster relief tents. Gourmet meals were to have been provided; guests were instead served sandwich bread, processed cheese and side salads. Beer had reportedly been ordered, but it never arrived.

Armitage Hux, founder and CEO of tech company SKBase, chronicled his experience of the event on Twitter.

> _Armitage Brendol Hux I™. Founder, engineer, and CEO of @SKBase. Technology you can SKBelieve in. Insta: @abhi Email: abhi@skbase.com_
> 
> Armitage B. Hux I (@ABHI) Apr 27  
> I’ll be out of the country today until Monday attending Karnival of Knights, which promises to be an extraordinary event.
> 
> Armitage B. Hux I (@ABHI) Apr 27  
> It may also be an historic bit of deception.
> 
> Armitage B. Hux I (@ABHI) Apr 27  
> Honestly, I’m expecting the worst.
> 
> Armitage B. Hux I (@ABHI) Apr 27  
> If I fail to return, I’ve arranged for my holdings to be reinvested in SKBase.

If he expected the worst, why did he go at all?

“If it had worked out, it would have been the most important event of the year,” Hux told me. “Perhaps the decade. To not be there for that would be unthinkable. And either way,” he added with a rakish smile that produced crinkles of mirth at the corners of his bright green eyes, “it was a great opportunity to get my company some exposure.”

Hux got a taste of what Karnival of Knights would be like before he even left the country. In Miami, the private charter jet he was promised turned out to be an economy seat on American Airlines. “I’m rather tall, so the flight was horribly uncomfortable,” he said, leaning back in his chair and stretching his long legs straight out to demonstrate.

Upon arrival, his luggage was nowhere to be found. Attendees stood scattered around the festival site aimlessly as recorded music thumped in the background. School buses, not luxury vehicles, shuttled people between the grounds and the city of disaster tents. A hastily constructed concierge stall stood empty.

As Hux was “wandering listlessly,” as he put it, he came across a notebook that seemed to belong to a festival organizer. One page included a grocery list of snack food. One listed other necessities such as cigarettes and flashlights. But amidst the strikingly superficial logistics notes, which included questions that likely should have been answered months before the event took place, there lay a few intriguing pages that hinted at who the true owner of the notebook might be.

“Consumer Analysis,” read a heading on one page. “Assess key sociodemographic factors and predict what might affect purchase decisions.” Another page featured a to-do list with the line item “Complete our corporate application.”

Once night fell, Hux was reunited with his luggage. Two festival workers, Dopheld Mitaka and Peter Thanisson, hurriedly dug designer suitcases out of a giant shipping container and tossed them into the crowd.

“It was embarrassing,” Mitaka told me in a brief phone interview, “but I wanted to finish quickly so I could get out of there.”

After securing what he could of his luggage in a tiny locker with no lock, Hux made his way to the dining tent, unaware that celebrated caterer Lando Calrissian had pulled out of the festival weeks before. Hux’s frame of mind at that point can perhaps be best illustrated by this tweet:

> Armitage B. Hux I (@ABHI) Apr 27  
> And now I have sand in my Cole Haans.

By this point, many attendees had given up on the festival, piling into buses and vans and heading for the airport. Hux followed suit, shortly after trashing his “pitiful” dinner in a nondescript white plastic trash can he sarcastically captioned “Luxury garbage area” on Twitter. He would later regret throwing away the meal, as attendees were left waiting for a flight out of the Bahamas for hours with no food or water.

Both weekends of the festival have been officially canceled. An apology message has been posted to the event website, karnivalofknights.com, taking the place of the vivid, evocative beach and concert photographs that had advertised “the time of your life.”

At time of writing, Karnival of Knights was still working to fly its attendees home. Kylo Ren could not be reached for comment, but he made a brief statement on Twitter.

> Kylo Ren (@renmaster) Apr 28  
> I truly apologize but this is NOT MY FAULT. @ABHI I want my notebook back.

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever written. It is obviously inspired by the Fyre Festival fiasco. Please note that I did change some details, so don’t take this as an accurate reporting of what happened at Fyre. All names and likenesses used in this fictional account are used for parody purposes only and do not represent the actual people or organizations. Originally posted to Tumblr [here](http://cosleia.tumblr.com/post/160105124138/karnival-of-blight-the-spectacular-failure-of).


End file.
